Up S### Creek: Gophers Unveil New Uni Set
BY PAUL LUKAS, UNI7 WATCH, FEBRUARY 21ST, 2018
February isn’t usually the time for college football uniform news items, but the Minnesota Gophers came up with a whopper yesterday, as they unveiled a new uni set that includes, as you can see above, an oar-themed helmet stripe and compass-themed helmet numbers. Those are references to Minnesota coach P.J. Fleck’s motivational “Row the boat” mantra (although I’ve never seen a compass on a rowboat), which he came up with during his previous coaching stint at Western Michigan.
“Row the boat” is more than just a coaching philosophy for Fleck — the slogan is rooted in the death of his second son, who had a congenital heart defect and died shortly after birth.
All of which is a powerful and moving story, but it has exactly nothing to do with Minnesota. Putting an oar on the Gophers’ helmets sends the message that the coach is more important than the team. Putting a coach’s slogan on the inner collar (where nobody can see it) or on the nose bumper (where it’s inconspicuous) is one thing, but making it part of the uniform design reflects an upside-down hierarchy of priorities. It was bad enough when Fleck got to dress Western Michigan in oar-themed jerseys. When he inevitably moves on to his next coaching gig, and the one after that, and the one after that, will those schools wear the oar? What if he makes the jump to the NFL — will one of those teams wear the oar?
When the news of this move broke yesterday, Uni Watch reader Kary Klismet posted this in the comments:
[T]aking that phrase from being a form of individual inspiration and shoehorning it onto the uniforms of every football team [Fleck] winds up coaching strikes me as an exercise in personal vanity and selfishness.
I agree, but I’d go a step further: In a world that’s increasingly dominated by the nonsense of “branding,” what we’re seeing here is the ascension of Fleck’s “personal brand.” You can tell that’s how Fleck himself views the situation because he paid Western Michigan for the intellectual property rights to the slogan when he left that school and moved on to Minnesota. It’d be one thing if he wanted to use the slogan as the title of a self-help book, or to sell T-shirts, or to start a rowboat concession down at the lake. But giving his personal brand equal time on the uniform of the of the school he supposedly serves is nuts. It’s the tail wagging the dog, or the boat rowing the oar, or something like that.
All this for a coach who went 5-7 in his first year at Minnesota, and whose lifetime mark is 35-29. I mean, ****, Alabama didn’t wear houndstooth for Bear Bryant until he’d been dead for 27 years.
For the record: The new Minnesota set includes three new helmets, only two of which have the oar. The third helmet is a gold chrome design. There’s also the same miserable number font they had before and increased use of the anthracite dark-grey jersey and pants. What a mess.